It‰’s always hard when a band puts out a record at the end of the year, with most of the music journalism outlets doing yearly retrospectives and countdowns. I believe that this is what happened to Narc Twain, the side project of Jukebox the Ghost guitarist Tommy Siegel that lists their genre as “dystopian future rock.‰” With only 869 Facebook likes and 242 Twitter followers, I feel like such a hipster when I‰’m talking about them, despite them sharing a member with a rather successful and well-known indie-pop group. They dropped their self-titled debut EP in early December of last year and, despite it being one of my favorite releases of the year, I haven‰’t seen buzz it deserves outside of social media. So this week I‰’ll be looking at my favorite track from the EP, “Same Shit,‰” expanding a bit on a thought I tweeted (that got retweeted by Tommy himself):

            The track, featuring punkishly distorted overlaid guitars, tight drumming, Daltrey-esque stuttering, and the occasional foghorn buried in the mix, was initially difficult for me to place an interpretation on. I don‰’t know if it was the burnout from writing term papers and studying for finals, but it hit me like a ton of bricks when I finally realized: it‰’s a comment on contemporary American politics. I believe the second verse and exemplifies this the best:

You have a better reputation
Than do the shit-heads from the prior generation
And listen, I‰’m no expert, but I do have eyes
And honestly, I fail to see the difference

And then Siegel rockets into the simple, but effective chorus:

It‰’s the same shit in a different nightmare
It‰’s the same shit; everybody sign here
It‰’s the same shit in a different century
So excuse me if I fail to see the difference

            Siegel, like many young people in America, clearly has become jaded by the sameness that has pervaded American politics lately—and this theme actually pervades most of the tracks on the EP. He is critical of the lack of progress that has been made; how stagnant he perceives lawmakers being. And, in this song in particular, he is critical of one entertainer-turned-GOP-presidential candidate in particular—as you‰’ve seen in the tweet I posted earlier. I believe that this is the “you‰” Siegel is addressing in the second verse. The candidate in particular has been compared to many a historical demagogue, but, despite this his popularity grew. However, many, including Siegel can see through it and “fail to see the difference.‰Û

            Later lyrics extrapolate on this jadedness, but with more concern with general American society than a particular candidate:

Hey, it‰’s a new kind of extortion,
But this time they‰’re gonna do it on their own terms
In a never-ending line of all-American white male handshakes
I think I fail to see the difference.

I waited in line for my entire life
And when I finally got to the counter
The man looked me in the eyes and asked me if I believed in reincarnation
And if so, better luck in the next life

These are not themes that are present in much of Siegel‰’s work with Jukebox the Ghost. While most of his writings are apocalyptic and/or dystopian in nature, few of his songs were this politically charged—the closest he came with Jukebox would be “The Stars‰” off of their sophomore release Everything Under the Sun, and it‰’s very subtle compared to his work with Narc Twain. I‰’m super excited Seigel has an outlet for these bleak dystopian songs, and I‰’m excited to hear (and maybe even see?) more of Narc Twain.